There are novels with prose so ponderous, with a rhythm so heavy and a breath so short that the pages seem to pant from sedentary overweight. The prose of the novel Tota la vida buscant, by Kae Tempest (London, 1985), a highly recognized name in the world of poetry, dramaturgy, and rhapsody, aims to be the exact opposite: agile, strong, sharp, tense, between electric lyricism, frontal narration, and raw realism. Sometimes Kae Tempest does not succeed in her purpose, and then she produces telegraphically anemic descriptions and repetitive passages, of a paralyzing prolixity. Sometimes she does achieve it, however, and then the novel vibrates with that authenticity that we usually attribute to things, people, and works not distorted by gratuitous sophistications or spurious intentions.The protagonist of the novel – I'm writing it this way because the central character, Rothko, is non-binary, just like theauthor, and also because, beyond whatever opinion each reader may have about inclusive language, literature is always an exercise in personal creativity and expressiveness, and therefore Tempest is as legitimized as Joyce to do whatever she wants with the language– is thirty-six years old and has just returned to her town after spending fifteen years in prison. The landscape she finds there is as desolate and depressing as when she had to leave: a mother who is a junkie in total process of degradation; a failed and absent father; an affectionate but difficult sister... In addition, Rothko experiences a double malaise, which has to do with her theoretically already overcome addictions and with her inability to feel fully as she is in her female body.The novel is divided into three parts, and unfolds like an omniscient panorama of which Rothko is the simultaneously afflicted and hopeful axis. In the first part, we witness Rothko's re-establishment of contact with his former world and his old life. Tempest describes very well Rothko's costly adaptation to freedom, his shame and his powerlessness in the face of a present that frightens him, and also knows how to paint in a very genuine and natural way the entire galaxy of wounded, damaged, poor and often marginal supporting characters who swarm his world. Where Tempest's talent shines brightest is in the synthetic narration of situations and the expressive exploration of personalities. In this sense, the pages about Rothko's parents, Ezra and Meg, why they are the way they are, what relationship they have maintained between them, are exceptional.Towards the redemptive culmination

The second part of the novel takes place twenty years earlier, and introduces us to Rothko as an adolescent, uncomfortable and out of place because she is a girl who wants to be a boy but does not dare to admit it. Although it also has emotional and strong passages, it is more conventional, like a typical bildungsroman: the decaying and uncomprehending family environment, pleasure and vice, ambient homophobia, love and sex with a girl who understands her... In the third part, Tempest returns to the present and recovers the rhythm and plasticity of her best prose, and, with a melodramatic touch, offers an atonement and a redemptive culmination, of possible reconstruction, for Rothko.The idea that art should have no function beyond being powerful and complex is very modern and perfectly legitimate and defensable, but it is also evident that it is an artistic conception that sometimes stems from the privilege of hegemony. I mean that Tempest, in her condition as a trans man who has already completed the complicated and painful process that her protagonist intends to go through, has also written this book to guide and explain. There are quite didactic dialogues, which are noticeably written to offer companionship and care to those who need it. One of the great things about good literature is that it makes familiar what is initially strange, and this All My Life Searching achieves it.

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If 2024 was the time to celebrate the first decade of Life, this year the mission (explicit in the hashtags promotional) was to go beyond the anniversary and bring the Vilanova i la Geltrú festival to a new life. This resulted in a lineup that explored areas that had been little explored in the event's programming, an aspect that was particularly noticeable on the main day, Friday, July 4, led by the Argentinians Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, who exhibit trap muscle with a tendency toward lyrical mischief. The duo performed with a band that enhanced the Latin rhythms of their performance, which might have gone unnoticed by those following the concert on screen, since the performance never strayed from the focus of the two lead vocalists. It might have seemed an eccentric move for those who associate Vida with indie pop, but the feeling was that of watching a team playing at home, in front of a legion of fans who returned every wink of the rhymes. In fact, it was the only moment of the entire weekend when, to secure a good spot, they had to deal with the kind of confines the festival prides itself on avoiding.

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